The Good Left Undone
by Airia Black
Summary: Piracy and ruthlessness are coupled hand in hand with honor and integrity, and a spacers life is never safe unless he learns to be amoral. You wouldn’t understand, Silver says. There is no other choice, he tells him. Jim Hawkins with an OC.


**Chapter One**

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_...In the end, you must remember your beginnings_...

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James Pleiades Hawkins remembered not being able to remember the moment when all of this went horribly, horribly wrong.

Perhaps it had been on that first shore leave in the lunar rings of Qwartz, or the moment when the ship's cook had come down with that mysterious illness that left the man bedridden with boiling blood. The doctors in the lunar port had said his sickness was unfathomable; that he had been poisoned deliberately and left to die. Jim ignored this strange diagnosis and simply, if not blindly, followed his Captain's orders and found a new crew member suitable to replace him. Things at that point, he was sure, were not the cause of his current situation right now. Or maybe they were. Maybe it was when Jim, in a moment of personal weakness, had allowed a fugitive to stow away in the ship's galley under false pretenses. Perhaps it had been a collective effort of all these things, but Jim, blinded by his innate sense of loyalty and willingness to forgive, had let it happen.

"Don't. Move."

Perhaps, he thought in vain, it had been before that first, detrimental shore leave. Perhaps all of this was really the Captain's undoing. After all, his current captor was an original crew member that he in all honesty had no say in hiring. But what had his captor known that he had not…had all of this been planned from the very beginning? Was this very act right now a premeditated objection plotted from the first day when they had launched from Aedaira?

He remembered that day, fondly, like he did all beginnings and tried to piece together some sort of clue that indicated this voyage had been destined for failure.

The winds of the Etherian had been calm and stagnant, motionless solar flares skittering across the abyss of starlight and endless space. The quadrant was clear, the space port still sleeping, and not even a single Orcus Galacticus was in sight. Jim remembered the launch having been perfect, a nostalgic tribute to his first launch all those years ago aboard the R.L.S Legacy, the ship rising gracefully and without the accustomed jerkiness he had grown used to while manning schooners captained by untrained helmsman in his academy days. His ship, his Captain's pride and glory, the H.R.E Inceptor seemed to be infallible and impervious to any sort of awkward and uncouth movement, as the frigate could practically launch itself and still manage to maintain its air of impressiveness. Without even thinking, he had followed his Captain's orders, barking out commands to the crew, who mindlessly, if not loyally, followed his command and unfurled the solar sails, activated the gravity generator and freed the hulking vessel from its riggings. With the welcomed whoosh of air blasting past his face, the Inceptor had freed itself from the gravitational pull of the lunar space port of the planet Aedaira and had commenced forth on its journey.

He remembered there had been nothing striking about his Captain's crew; the man had hired them all in good faith and consciousness and never before had he doubted the middle-aged man's judgment. They were all able-bodied men, alongside a few women, space-hardy and willing to follow his command. Mind the few academy graduates who seemed to occupy the higher standing positions, such as the master gunner, boatswain, and the ship's surgeon, most of the men (and women) were common spacers willing to work on commission with the promise of good, warm meals and fair command under the eye of Captain Charles F. Graveling, a high ranking navel officer Interstellar Academy graduate in the service of Her Royal Empress. Their services to the Empress were simple, and their goal was nothing out of the ordinary. Their ship was to deliver the renewed trade-route treaties to the planet Aria in the Quaran Galaxy. It was nothing Jim wasn't familiar with, as he had participated in similar missions many a time before, all going without a hitch or failure.

However, now as he stood with a gun pointed to his face, his Captain inebriated in the brig below, and running the risk of loosing both his life and command of his crew, he realized there must have been something he missed. But with his memory strained and nothing seeming out of the ordinary, he simply couldn't pinpoint the moment where things began to spiral out of control…

"Take another step towards that communication tube and I'll make it so you'll never be able to write another message with that hand in your life."

He exhaled and stood still, eying his would-be 'crew member' with perpetual coldness. He was acting Captain of the H.R.E Inceptor, and he would let his offender know he was _not_ impressed with this situation at all. With his pristine white officer's suit leaving no room for hidden gadgetry, he knew he was sufficiently screwed the moment he had yielded his gun to the floor. In his Captain's top left desk drawer, he knew the man kept a loaded ion revolver, but he wasn't within arms reach…tentatively, he leaned against the front edge of the desk and folded his arms across his chest. His mind was racing, but his body remained calm with uncanny stillness. If he could only edge himself in a subtle manner towards the compartment, he could leap back across the wood surface and hope to rearm himself, effectively giving himself leverage against his attacker once again. Then again, the moment he made any abrupt movement, he was sure his assailant would fire, and with a shot that promised never to miss, he calculated he had a 1.3 second interval in which he could successfully retrieve the revolver without getting himself injured. What he really needed was a distraction…if someone would simply knock on the door…

However, given the time of day (or should he say night), he knew most of the crew would be sleeping and without a doubt, his perpetrator had counted on this. _Besides_, he thought with little humor, _I was the one who invited her in here…there's nothing even to be suspicious of._ There would be no need to disturb the acting Captain at this ungodly hour, especially with his _special_ guest, whom most of the crew had sniggered about… not unless something disastrous was about to happen. But if he didn't stop her, this girl with the gun, the one pointing the smooth, gun-metal gray barrel straight at his forehead, he knew disaster would strike, and at dawn, upon entering the Zolstice solar system, all hell would break loose.

"How many languages can you say 'dead-man' in, _James_?" she asked conversationally.

"_One_," was his reply through gritted teeth.

"Pity," she replied, her mouth turning upwards into a slightly disturbing grin. "I can say it in seven."

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**Author's Note:**_ TBC. Read and review._


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